More is got from one book on which the thought settles for a definite end in knowledge, than from libraries skimmed over by a wandering eye. A cottage flower gives honey to the bee, a kings garden none to the butterfly.

Nine times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the narrow gulf from youth to manhood. That interval is usually occupied by an ill-placed or disappointed affection. We recover and we find ourselves a new being. The intellect has become hardened by the fire through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have undergone.

Society is a long series of uprising ridges, which from the first to the last offer no valley of repose. Wherever you take your stand, you are looked down upon by those above you, and reviled and pelted by those below you.

There is sentiment in all women, and sentiment gives delicacy to thought, and tact to manner. But sentiment with men is generally acquired, an offspring of the intellectual quality, not, as with the other sex, of the moral.

When the world has once got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to get it out of the world. You beat it about the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and lo! the next day it is as healthy as ever.

Wonder, says Aristotle, is the first cause of philosophy. This is quite as true in the progress of the individual as in that of the concrete mind; and the constant aim of philosophy is to destroy its parent.